


Thin Red Line

by babbleface



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance, So smol, kastle - Freeform, my murderous husband and my journalist wife, no one dies and no one is unhappy, so precious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 20:45:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6393184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babbleface/pseuds/babbleface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She still thinks about it sometimes. That line of red tape around the hospital bed. That thin little border that no one could cross. She had wondered, at the time, what the consequences would be if she slid the tip of her toe over the line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thin Red Line

**Author's Note:**

> So I guess I'm Kastle trash now.
> 
> Side note: I like Karen Page, Intrepid Reporter way better than Karen Page, Legal Assistant
> 
> Frank Castle is my special, precious murdering husband and should get his own Netflix show. And he should drop Karen Page, Intrepid Reporter, hints when he is wiping out bad guys so she can write cool exposes about the criminal underworld.

She still thinks about it sometimes. That line of red tape around the hospital bed. That thin little border that no one could cross. She had wondered, at the time, what the consequences would be if she slid the tip of her toe over the line.

 

The consequences were much heavier than she could have ever imagined.

But it was worth it. After all the hell she went through, after being shot at, kidnapped, held at gun point, getting her car wrecked, it was all worth it. 

Some nights she lies in bed, in the dark, listening to that song. She salvaged the tape from the remains of her car, and bought an old cassette player in a pawn shop, just so she could hear that song again. She didn’t like to admit it, but sometimes listening to that song was the only thing that could lull her to sleep.

 

She is thinking about the red line at work, sitting hunched over Ben’s old desk, her desk. She’s stuck, tapping her notepad with her pen, staring at a half-typed document, unable to find precisely the right words to say what she wants to say. She sighs and leans back in her chair, feeling her back muscles protest after being stuck in one position for too long. Karen looks down at her notepad and sees that the margins are filled with doodles, incomplete rectangles, carved into the pages by her red pen. It’s been over a year but it’s hard, some days, to get that thin red line out of her head.

She throws in the towel after another hour of staring and doodling. Karen packs up her things and leaves the office, the last one out, shutting off all the lights as she goes. It’s late, much too late for her to be safely walking the streets alone, but the 0.380 in her purse gives her a little more security. As it is, no one approaches her and she makes it all the way to the apartment without having to make eye contact with anyone. The fluorescent lights in the elevator flicker as she goes up to her floor. She unlocks her door in the dark hallway, and steps inside. The rattling of her keys and her shitty lock mask the sound of the music for a moment. When she hears it her back is still to the rest of her apartment, tucking her keys back into her purse, toeing off her shoes.

The song floats softly through the apartment, from the kitchen, in the back, and Karen thinks she hears something else as well. A quiet rumble, rusty and out of practice, that is unmistakably singing. It’s not good singing, but Karen would know that voice anywhere. She leaves her purse by the door, and crosses the floor to the kitchen quietly.

The bullet holes in the walls, the ones left by the Blacksmith, were plastered over, but small depressions have formed where the plaster sunk into the shredded drywall. Now the tiny impressions linger, like ghosts, in Karen’s walls. She drags her fingers over the damaged wall as she crosses the apartment, feeling the ghosts of the past, remembering one of the last times she saw him.

 

He’s standing over her kitchen counter, brewing coffee. The kitchen is tiny, barely big enough to fit Karen’s slender frame into the room. Frank looks like he had to fold himself in half to fit in comfortably. Karen’s cassette player sits on the counter, volume turned down low. Frank is singing along softly, voice rumbling and cracking over notes he can’t quite reach. Karen leans against the doorjamb, arms folded, watching him. He still has the same haircut and he still stands like a soldier, head bowed forward, shoulders back, but there is a relaxation in his stance that she’s never seen before.

“Long day at the office, Ma’am?” he asks, keeping his eyes on the coffee pot. Karen notices that there are two mugs on the counter.

“I didn’t think nice boys broke into nice girls apartments at one in the morning.” 

“Who said anything about either of us being nice?” Frank asks. This time he glances at her. Karen almost misses the look. “Am I still dead to you?” 

“You look pretty alive to me,” Karen says. 

She moves into the kitchen and leans against the counter. She keeps a slight distance of six inches between them, as much as the tiny kitchen will allow. Frank really does look at her this time. His face is still bruised, although in a different pattern than when she last saw him. He has a new scar on his forehead, creeping up into his hair, and a bandage is holding a gash on his chin closed. Karen adds these to the catalogue of his injuries she has been running in her head, which has tallied up to ten so far, and that’s just what Karen can see.

“Although,” she says, “Alive might be relative.”

At this Frank cracks a small smile and looks away to pour the coffee. He hands Karen her favourite mug, a large, chipped, dark blue mug with the finish wearing off the handle. He drinks his from one of her plain white mugs, stained with age and over use. Karen watches him. She keeps her hands wrapped around her mug, letting the hot ceramic warm her tired hands. She sees bruises around his throat, bruises that look like hand prints and ups the injury count up to eleven. Karen resolves to deliver a lecture on safety if the count gets up to thirteen.

“How’s your dog?” she asks quietly. She looks down at her coffee and stares at her distorted reflection. She hears Frank sigh and she hears the clink of ceramic on the vinyl countertop.

“He’s good.” 

Frank, Karen remembers, was never one for elaborating. He only ever said exactly the amount he meant to, not one word more or less.

“Good,” Karen nods and takes a sip of her coffee. The bitterness almost stings as it goes down and the heat makes her shudder.

“You’re cold,” Frank says. His hand brushes up against Karen’s arm. His palms and fingers are calloused, probably from using so many guns, Karen imagines.

“I’m - “ Karen starts to say that she isn’t cold, then she realizes that this is the first time Frank has voluntarily touched her without extenuating circumstances. “I’m a little cold,” she says instead, lowering her eyes so he can’t see the lie. Frank moves, standing in front of her, and his other hand comes up to touch her shoulder.

“What’s the point of sleeves if they don’t keep you warm,” he mumbles, more to himself, Karen suspects, than to her. She doesn’t answer, she just stands there, leaning on the counter, holding her coffee, letting Frank run his palms up and down her arms, feeling the callouses from his work through the sheer sleeves of her shirt.

Karen wants desperately to speak, but her heart is in her throat. She’s afraid that if she makes a sound she’ll break whatever this moment is. In the end she can’t bring herself to destroy something so rare and fragile.

Frank slowly stops, his hands resting, fingers wrapping gently around Karen’s arms, just above her elbows. When she still won’t look at him he slides the coffee mug out of her hands, and places it on the counter behind her. When Karen looks up her stomach twists and her heart drops all the way to her toes. He rarely looks her in the eye, she realizes. The entire time they were helping each other, he looked her in the eye a handful of times. Those times seem distant, although Karen is sure that she has dreamed of those eyes. The eyes of a man full of loss, full of anger, full, despite everything else, of love. Karen finds herself staring into those eyes again and they haven’t changed a bit.

She could barely resist the last time, but the stress, the blood, and the feeling of Matt’s hands on her, they had distracted her. This time, Karen doesn't resist. It’s a short distance between them, especially since he meets her half way, hands sliding around her waist, pressing into the small of her back. His mouth is soft against hers and Karen is gentle when she presses her hands against him, pulling him closer. Her catalogue of injuries goes up another number when she slips her hands around his back and feels the padding of a bandage under one shoulder blade.

 

When Frank pulls away he rests his forehead against hers and he doesn’t let go of the grip his has on her. Karen breathes slowly, deeply, keeping her hands pressed against his back so he can’t feel her shaking.

“Twelve,” she breathes.

“What?” 

“You’ve got twelve injuries. That I can see, anyway.” 

Karen thinks he might be smiling, although she can’t see his face.

“You’re being careful, aren’t you?” she asks.

“As careful as I can be,” Frank replies. His hands slide back down her back and circle her waist. Karen likes the feeling. She knows, in the back of her mind, that these are the hands that take the lives of countless criminals, but all the same, the gentleness that he handles her with, it reminds her of why she trusts him.

“No more than twelve injures, or I’ll have to lecture you,” she says. Frank laughs. It sounds rusty but it makes Karen feel warm.

“Yes Ma’am,” he says.

Karen wonders, briefly, if crossing that thin red line meant as much to him as it did to her. She wonders, just for a second before he kisses her again, if it had changed his life as much as it changed hers. She wonders if he would go back and change it if he could.

 

She knows she wouldn’t.


End file.
